Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i and Oracle8, Second Edition

Best Practices

Those experienced in data warehousing generally agree that the following are typical reasons why data warehouse projects fail:

Failure to involve business users, IT representatives, sponsoring executives, and anyone else with a vested interest throughout the data warehousing process

Not only do all of these groups provide valuable input for creating a data warehouse, but any one of them can cause a data warehouse to fail through their lack of support.

Overlooking the key reasons for the data warehouse existence

During the sometimes long planning stages, data warehouse designers can lose sight of the forces driving the creation of the warehouse.

Overlooked details and incorrect assumptions

A less-than-rigorous examination of the environment for a data warehouse can doom the project to failure.

Unrealistic time frames and scope

As with all projects, starting the creation of a data warehouse with too short a time frame or too aggressive a scope will force the data warehouse team to cut corners, resulting in the mistakes previously mentioned.

Failure to manage expectations

Data warehouses, like all technologies, are not a panacea. You must make sure that all members of the team, as well as the eventual users of the data warehouse, have an appropriate set of expectations.

Tactical decision-making at the expense of long-term strategy

Although it may seem overly time-consuming at the start, you must keep in mind the long-term goals of your project, and your organization, throughout ...